AMG Chooses Soundcraft for O2 Academy Birmingham

13 August 2009

Two Soundcraft Vi6’s have been specified by Academy Music Group to take care of mixing duties at the new £5m O2 Academy Birmingham, which opens on Thursday 10 September, with a sell out performance by Editors. The Vi6’s have the capacity to service FOH and monitor requirements as necessary on the 3,000-capacity main stage, 600-capacity O2 Academy 2 - and a third live room, which holds 250.

Adlib Audio has been retained by AMG for this latest development, having installed multiples of Soundcraft’s premier digital desks in AMG’s most recent venues, O2 Academy Leeds and O2 Academy Sheffield.

The brace of Vi6’s in Birmingham will move easily and quickly around the expansive 45,000sq ft venue, as part of the standard flight-cased touring package.

Commenting on the purchase, AMG’s Group Technical Manager, Ed Jackson says, “The new V3.0 software upgrade has taken the desk to a new level and this is largely the reason we are specifying these at our new venue. The new snapshot saving function is very important and there are other exceptional features.” Jackson also notes the channel extensions offered in the new software are a further bonus, giving the Vi6 96-input capacity potential.

Other new features in V3.0 include finer adjustment of input and output delay trims, enhanced metering on the master bay which includes Gain Reduction, import and export of channel labels from and to spreadsheet files using USB, ganging of GEQs on output busses and selective loading of show configurations.

The new software resides within the context of a thoroughly well thought out desk. “Everyone is now talking about how good the sound is - and a lot of engineers are now touring with it,” continues Jackson. “It makes life easier because it’s one less piece of kit [touring productions] have to bring in.”